Climate change reporting becomes CSR mainstay

Climate change has become a key component of CSR reports for the bulk of the world's multinationals, according to a new report from CSR website CorporateRegister.com.

Released yesterday, the Corporate Climate Communications report assessed the climate change disclosures of companies on the Global FT500 list. It found that of the two thirds issuing stand alone non-financial or CSR reports almost nine out of 10 included information on their climate change strategy.

Moreover, 78 per cent of the reports included greenhouse gas emissions data alongside broader information on the company’s climate change policies.

However, the report also raised concerns over the extent to which such figures can be trusted. Less than half of the reports including greenhouse gas emissions data provided external assurance to verify the figures, with US firms particularly guilty of failing to deliver third party authentication to back up their carbon disclosures.

Robert Dornau, director of the climate change programme at report sponsor and certification specialist SGS, insisted that companies were dilutiung the effectiveness of their CSR reports by not providing third party verification to support their disclosures. "The question on everyone's mind is 'how can I trust you?'," he said. "Independent third-party assurance is an important way to respond to stakeholder concerns over credibility, especially with regard to climate change and emissions data."

However, CorporateRegister.com managing director Paul Scott insisted that while concerns over data verification needed to be addressed the widespread voluntary adoption of climate change reporting was already paving the way for an improvement in firm's carbon performance. "The era of wholesale corporate climate change denial is over: we may now be witnessing the beginnings of corporate climate activism," he said.